aligned as love

HAVING FAITH

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HAVING FAITH

Moving beyond the doubter

It’s evident that there is an intelligent principle at work in this universe.  Something that has organized the suns, planets, galaxies and the infinite cosmos.  Clearly no human intelligence made this universe and yet we tend to doubt that anything but human intelligence exists or is at work.  Even if we consider ourselves spiritual we often don’t live in the knowingness or conviction that “spirit” is really present in our life.  Regardless of what we want to call this intelligence (ie. spirit, soul, source, love, grace, presence, etc.) it appears to be beyond our current human capacity in its intelligence and its ability it organize life at the galactic or universal level.

The more lucid you become in this human dream the more clear it becomes how little the human perspective takes into account.  From the perspective of the human it feels that we must take care of it all, do it all and make it all happen on our own.  We feel everything is up to us and therefore live out our lives making things happen without too much recognition of forces or intelligences at work underneath the surface of our life.  This is because the human sees itself as a separate self, a sort of object in a sea of other objects.  We give this object that we perceive a name and further identity characteristics that seem to validate its separate and distinct beingness or existence.  This distinct identity and separate self is what gives rise to the experience of disconnection and the experience that in order for things to occur one object must do something onto another object.  There is no consideration of anything deep to the surface appearance.

From this widely viewed human lens of seeing objects, separate parts and the mechanical view of life, it’s no wonder people are stressed out, anxious, depressed and overwhelmed.  Living disconnected from the source of life leaves us feeling vulnerable, exposed, uncertain and unsafe.  We do our very best to create certainty and a sense of safety, yet it comes at great cost.  The cost being that we give away our enjoyment, presence and childlike wonder in order to give ourselves some perceived sense of safety and certainty.  We become insistent about what the picture or appearance of our life should look like in order that we feel ok to relax and be, and we work really, really hard to get that picture right.  We are defensive and self-protective.  We live in a constant state of doubt.  Doubt that we will be ok, doubt that we will be taken care of, doubt that we will get to do or experience the things we think we want to, doubt that life is or will work out.  We lack faith, and because we lack faith we can’t sleep at night, we feel tense, we have digestive upset, our thoughts race, we have trouble focusing, we never feel like we can totally relax and we live in a state of vigilance to what might happen next. 

LEAPS OF FAITH 

Past the edge of fear

There is a way through continually living in doubt (aka fear), but it requires us taking lots of leaps of faith.  We must take these leaps of faith in order for us to become rested in faith.  To be rested in faith is to know, to be convicted in, the wellness of all.  It is to stably know all is well and not jump into doubt, fear and separation when life seems to throw you curve balls or challenges.  It is to stop attempting to control and manage life, and rather enjoy and live it.  This is always inside of your choice even when it feels like it’s not.  

From the perspective of the human mind it takes tons of courage in order to take leaps of faith.  When you leap you are essentially letting go.  Letting go of your story, your agenda, and your ideas about what is.  These are all modes of control.  You are also subtly letting go your identity, of your sense of rightness, your sense that you know how things are, of how you think things are supposed to be, and so it feels shaky, destabilizing and uncertain.  This is the place of the edge of our fears, which really are simply distorted perspectives of separation, but nonetheless they feel very, very real to us.  

Leaps of faith are the way past the edge.  They will take you into and through a portal into an expanded perspective.  After you take the leap and are on the other side of the experience you will see that the thing you feared so greatly really wasn’t a big deal at all.  They only thing that was ever a big deal was your doubt about it.  It is only by taking the leap and going through the portal that you come to know safety, stability and well-being.  You can’t know it by thinking about it, reading about it, or talking about it, you have to experience it in order to know it.  You must leap.

When we don’t take the leaps that we need to we feel stuck.  We feel trapped and can’t find the way or “how” out.  When we think we need the how first we are simply postponing making the decision to leap.  “How’s” come after we leap, not beforehand.  The mind hates this, and yet it is how you learn faith.  Faith doesn’t guarantee any outcomes.  Things or people may come and go in and out of your life.  Desired happenings may or may not happen.  Faith puts you in a state of openness and receptivity, to receive life rather than have to make it happen.  This is how you come to know that intelligent force that is beyond the human mind.  It is how you start to reconnect to that source of love.  It is how you experience unity with others and all, rather than viewing yourself as a distinct, separate person.  Before you take the leaps required all of that will simply stay conceptual to you.  Like thoughts that you like to think about, but you won’t know it or experience it, and you will probably feel frustrated that you don’t.  

Faith is the primary human lesson.  Conviction in faith is the end of stress, anxiety and overwhelm.  It is the recognition and connection with your galactic brothers and sisters and beyond.  Don’t take my word for it though.  Try it out.  Take the leaps that life is asking for you to take.  Feel good and free yourself.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

THERE IS NO VEIL

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THERE IS NO VEIL 

Why we feel disconnected from knowing

We are all trying to know something, to figure something out, to find something, and yet none of us really know what that something is that we are attempting to discover.  Maybe we think it’s clarity, or understanding, or insight, yet it appears to be on the other side of something.  It’s as though there is this veil, this thing we can’t see past or across, this disconnection or separation from knowing.  But what if that seeming veil of disconnection that comes with the feeling sense of being lost, in the dark, or clouded isn’t actually real?  What if there is nothing in between you and the known?  What if we are just making up this whole disconnection thing even though it seems so real to us?

Like so many things that seem real to us until we realize that they are not, our feeling sense experience of disconnection from knowing seems as real as our arm.  It really feels real that we don’t know and that knowing is somewhere else, on the other side, or separate from where we are, what we know and who we are.  It feels like knowing must come from some other source, like a mysterious person, event or thing knows and we have to figure it out or get to it so that we can know.  But what if that seeming distance, that seeming separation from knowing, is simply a perspective?  What if we believe we are separate and are thus just playing out our belief in it.  Our beliefs seem real, until we realize they aren’t.

For a moment think of your life like a repeating groundhog’s day just like that 90s movie with Bill Murray.  Each day you wake up and it’s the exact same thing.  At first you are a little taken back by it, maybe even annoyed, frustrated or bored.  After days, weeks and months go on like this you start to realize that you know what’s coming, and because you know what’s coming you relax a little bit.  You start to shake things up, play around with stuff, and you take almost nothing seriously.  Each day you experiment with being and doing something new because you know that the next day will bring the same set of circumstances and conditions.  

Knowing that you know and realizing that there is no veil is like this.  Rather than being cautious, holding your breathe, being concerned about how things will turn out, or trying to figure things out, you stop being vigilant.  You realize that nothing is really serious and that all this cautiousness (aka fear) that you experience is simply because you are playing out the game that you don’t know (and I assure you it is a game).  And because you believe that you don’t know you feel uncertain and unsure that things will be ok.  You doubt ok-ness and therefore live vigilant to the potential that things will be not ok, or even that they will be bad or horrible.  You therefore don’t relax, feel tense and are constantly afraid at some level that the shoe will drop.  So you desperately attempt to hold onto the shoe, however the shoe is simply a thought, it has no solid substance, so there is nothing stable to hold onto, so you feel unstable.  All the while unconsciously repeating over and over and over and over and over again in your mind the thought “something bad might happen” or “something might not be ok”.   

LOVE IS ALWAYS ACCESSIBLE

Choosing knowing & connection

When we know that things are ok we feel free and therefore we openly give ourselves and radiate to and with field of life.  You could say we freely express love or what we are.  We perceive no threat, therefore we have nothing we need to protect from ourselves or others.  We are free to be ourselves fully.  We tend to not mind or care what happens because we know all is well regardless.  It doesn’t mean we don’t care as a quality of heart, in fact quite the opposite.  We don’t care about story lines or what we or others think should or shouldn’t be, but rather care about love and all of its  expressions.  This is the experience of joy or happiness that isn’t based on any conditions, but rather a state of beingness that we just are or is.  When we don’t believe or know that things will always be ok no matter what, we contain and hold.  We don’t radiate or give to the field of life, because we fear something will go wrong or that we or others will be harmed.  We self-preserve.  Self-preservation is limited to only exchange energy and information with itself.  This is why it often feels cut off or separate.  There is frequently the feeling sense that there is not enough of something, such as resources, money, food, love, connection, joy, happiness, etc.  Limitation feels real.

It seems crazy that something as seemingly small as a belief that things will be ok versus things won’t be ok could really make such a big difference in our day to day experience of this life, yet it does.  Some people want to argue that it’s not that simple.  They want to keep playing the victim to life rather than recognizing themselves as the creator of it, so they will conjure up a million and ten excuses why they can’t change or choose.  That’s ok, and if at some point they want to have a different experience of life then they are going to have to wake up a little bit and realize what they are choosing and choose differently.  It can feel hard and sometimes even impossible to see ourselves, choose differently and take new actions based on our choosing, yet there is nothing too big, too far, or too unknown for you to transform.  You are bigger than your childhood traumas, your relationship challenges, and your sensations and emotions.  There isn’t anyone that is human that hasn’t experienced all of these things and yet those things are not the problems that we tend to think are.  Rather they are the teachers that we have in this life to help us remember who we are and to help us shift our perspective of disconnection and separation back into remembrance that we know.  

When we realize that the veil of disconnection is not real, that it is just a perspective that we can choose or not, we know love.  Love becomes instantly accessible to us rather than it being pushed out to some future moment when things are more right, clear or perfect.  See we often think that we need some clarity, insight, answer or understanding first, but love/connection comes first.  Clarity, insight, answers and understanding follow.  We feel bad when we aren’t in love and we feel good when we are.  When I say in love I don’t mean it in the context of a relationship with another person, but rather in the pure state of being it.  Love is all anyone ever really wants.  We think we want other stuff besides love because we think we will get love in the stuff.  Stuff like other people, activities, events, health or answers, however we will only ever get reflections of love from all that stuff, which is not a stable source of it.  In order to know love you must recognize yourself as the source of it.  You must become it.  You must become what you are.  Then love never leaves.  In truth it never has.  You’ve never been disconnected from the never ending source of pure bliss, ecstasy, union and connection that you are.  You only thought you were.  And just like you conjured up the thought of disconnection, you can conjure up the thought of connection.  Stop taking your cues about who or what you are from your previous life experiences and reflections.  Rather project out onto life the knowing that you are love, that you know, that you are connected, and you will transform everything into that.   

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

BE THE SOURCE OF WELLNESS

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BE THE SOURCE OF WELLNESS

Get to give

Most are in a constant strive to get.  Get possessions, get relationships, get money, get fame, get love, get safety, get healthy, get enlightened, get well.  Getting seems to be the only way we experience what we want, or at least we think it is.  Many of our social and cultural structures are built around getting something or getting somewhere.  School, competitive sports, the right job, the creative business, even vacations, meditation, and leisure activities can become sources of getting for us when the intention is to get something out of them even if it’s relaxation.  

Now there is nothing inherently wrong with getting.  It’s simply that getting is an outsourcing of our own power.  It is also a never-ending, scarce way to approach life because it seems as though there will always be more that you need to get.  The perspective that drives this approach is rooted in a sense of lack of a self.  When there is not recognition of a self, of a you, that has impact and is a creator, than the source of creatorship or power appears to come from the things we perceive to be around us.  This is classical projection or disowning one’s power or self.  

While many people in spiritual circles and communities are busy attempting to dismantle their sense of a self, or ego identity as a separate individual, you must first discover that there is a self to dismantle.  If you don’t you will continue to come from disempowered views even if you occasionally experience high states of energy or have spiritual insights and experiences.  From a developmental perspective there is first non-awareness of self (or a pre-self) in which it seems life is randomly happening and there is a getting to survive.  Secondly there is development of a self, of a person, that has impact, that can do stuff and where there is a you that is happening to life.  Here we get in order to validate that we are a self and that we are important.  Thirdly there is non-self or transcending the sense of a separate individual person self into a unified sense of one self.  To develop from the second to third we must transition from getting perspectives to giving perspectives.  Here to give is to get as all is one being, yet that is only realized through first making the shift from get to give.   

GETTING IS NOT THE ONLY WAY TO RECEIVE

The frequency you choose

As much as we might believe that getting is the only way to receive what we think we want or need, it’s only because that is the prime way we’ve been operating.  We think we need to get something in order to experience what we desire.  For example if we don’t feel relaxed we think we need to do something or find someone to “give” us relaxation. Hence we need to get relaxation from somewhere. This can go for anything we are attempting to get like wealth, relationships, love, safety, health, enlightenment, wellness, and on.  Most people think they need to get these things or how else on earth will they ever experience them.  

Like everything else getting is simply a frequency.  When we vibrate with the frequency of “get” then we are vibrating with a sense of what we want isn’t here and that we must somehow, someway get it.  Essentially we are vibrating with the frequency of “not” or “lack.”  Nearly everyone is doing this, but they are unconscious to it, and even beyond that they don’t realize that they are in charge of their frequency to begin with.  The way I see it, the only true responsibility any of us has is to our frequency.   Though we might think we are responsible for all the comings and goings of life, of people’s reactions and feelings, and on and on, the only one real responsibility we have is how we choose to vibrate.  Yet we must recognize our choosing and that it is our choice first.  This is where that second stage of development comes in, the recognition of a self, a self that does onto life, prior to merging into the one self. 

In the recognition that we choose what we vibrate as you see that how you vibrate is what you give.  You give your vibration.  It’s natural and effortless regards of whatever vibration you choose to be, whether it’s lack or abundance, or getting or giving.  What you give is also what you then experience.  This is how you experience all things you want to experience without trying to go out and get them.  You must ask yourself what is at the core of everything it is that you want to get.  When you find the core of it, whether its love, safety, supported, nurtured, cared for, vital, free or well, decide to choose that vibration to be.  This is the only way you actually experience it.  Even if you continue to believe in the getting path, many of you know that you will get things that you think will give you what you want, but sooner rather than later, you feel not how you wanted to feel or how you hoped the thing would make you feel.  It’s because you never owned, you never became it.  You never became the vibration of what you wanted, you only temporarily projected it onto something, but then realized that all something’s change, and with the change so did your feeling state of what you desired.  

In order to not be shifted by all the changing of things you must be in ownership of what you vibrate.  Not in a sort of, sometimes way, where you are still trying to get what you want, while pretending to be spiritual.  Rather this is to be the source of wellness, after all you are it.  It is the end of using permission slips and projections.  To own that you are the source, is to be fully responsible for how you experience everything inside of your experience.  You are not responsible for the experience, rather only what you give to it, what you be, what you vibrate.  It is the end of the chase and of the never-ending experience of scarcity, but only if you so choose.  The projection, the appearance, the experience, won’t change until you do, or better said the projection, appearance or experience will mirror whatever it is you vibrate.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

NOTHING IS LACKING

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NOTHING IS LACKING 

Key to perceiving all as is

We have an almost incessant persistence to view from the perspective of lack.  It appears to us that things are missing, out of place, or somehow not present.  We attempt to create that which we view as not from seeing it as not, which often comes with feelings of frustration and fruitlessness as we work really hard to get nowhere.  We create definitions and meanings about what is not that further reinforce our perspective of not-ness and frustration about what isn’t.  What if not-ness is not?  What if our perspective of lack is actually the presence of something?  Perhaps our focus on what we view as not, blocks our view of what is.  

Where does our desire to create come from?  What is the fuel source of our desires?  Are you motivated to create because you perceive something to be lacking or because it’s simply your joy to create whatever it is you are?  When you create are you creating from the perspective of seeing what you are creating as not, or do you see it as already present?  These are not trick question, nor are they law of attraction, spiritual, new age hogwash.  There is more than semantics happening here.  The truth is most people create because they perceive something to be lacking.  We then take that perspective of lack and attempt to create that which we see not present.  One of the key indicators that you might be doing this is that you are secretly miserable in your creation attempts of whatever it is you are wanting to create, despite the fact that you present good face to your friends, family and social media.  Even if whatever you are attempting to create is altruistic and service oriented, meaning it’s goal is to support others in some way, if you come from the perspective that whatever it is you are wanting to create is lacking, and that the world really needs it because its not present, you will only create more lack rather than than the thing you really want to create.  

The key to know here is that we create with our perspective not with our hands.  That is not to say that we won’t need to use our hands to do things and move stuff around in this material reality, but actual creation comes from how we view.  The perspective of seeing something as lacking creates more of that lacking.  The perspective of seeing what is as already here, actually seeing it here, creates it.  Seeing creates what we see.  Seems obvious, but we often don’t recognize the source of our seeing and rather focus only on what we see.  The source of what we see is the seer, or the perceiver, or you.  It now becomes obvious that you are the creator, and what has been unconscious is the how of how you create and how you’ve been creating this entire time.   

BEYOND DISBELIEF

Getting things to reveal themselves

We are riddled in disbelief.  We use our disbelief to validate our perspectives in order to be right about whatever it is we are insisting on, while simultaneously shooting ourselves in our own foot.  Our “healthy” skepticism keeps the ordinary magic of our everyday reality just out of our reach so that we can keep experiencing our reality in the same rote, lacking, and scarce ways we always have.  As much as we might “believe” that it’s hard to change our beliefs, it’s actually not.  It’s easy as pie.  What’s challenging is letting go of our sense of rightness, or that we know.  The blatant truth is that none of us know shit, even though we really like to think we do.  Pretty much everything is cloaked in mystery, yet that amount of magic (aka present moment spontaneously arising aliveness) is often too much for us to take.  So we find a way to generate certainty for ourselves by creating “facts” of reality, which are really just beliefs that we’ve come fully believe in as law, the truth, or the way things are.  The good news is that we can actually make this work for us rather than against us.

Our “hardcore” belief in lack is really just our insistence, one of the prime ones, of how reality is.  We accept this belief so blindly, meaning most don’t even think to question it.  Reflect on the following example: you look out in front of you and see that there is not a zebra in the room with you.  Let’s say that you take the perspective, based on this tiny little viewpoint of you in a room, that a zebra is lacking in existence because it’s not here in this room with you.  Rather than zooming out (ie. in this example zooming out would be doing something like turning on the African nature channel) you conclude that you must create a zebra because it is lacking.  This becomes very important to you because you view zebras as pivotal creatures to this planet.  You do your best to find all the parts of a zebra in order to create it from scratch, but you find that it’s super hard work, pretty much impossible to create, but none-the-less you persist and devote your entire life to creating zebras.  

Even though this is an absolutely ridiculous example it makes an important point.  What if rather than looking at the situation and concluding that a zebra is lacking because it’s not in the room with you, you set out to find its existence, because you believed, or somehow intuitively knew, that it already exists.  How far would you have to go to discover it?  Would discovering the zebra be more fun than creating it from random pieces and parts that don’t really fit together?  Believing, or choosing to know, that what we want to create already exists takes a tremendous burden off of us, a burden that nearly all of us carry around.  Rather than us having to figure out a bunch of stuff that we don’t know how to figure out, and do the seemingly impossible, we simply get to be in the curiosity of how to find the thing or how to get it to express itself.  We tempt and tease it into existence like a strategic game of hide and seek.  When we realize/believe that it already is, that nothing at all is lacking, it really just becomes a game of discovering how to get things to reveal themselves.  We may midwife them into form, but we are not responsible for the form.  The only thing we are responsible for is that we have fun while we curiously tease life to express itself.

You can exchange the word zebra with any of the following words: partner, business, project, finances, house, car, baby, healthy planet, healthy body, and on and on.  You can see how this becomes relevant for you now.  Just because any one of these things aren’t in the room with you doesn’t mean they don’t exist.  If you go about attempting to create them from the perspective of lack, it will be not be very much fun.  You will probably suffer, struggle and cry a lot.  That’s what it’s like to create from lack.  However rather than taking on the burden of creating from lack (which is actually impossible) you choose to see them as already existing, then you get to play the game of revelation.  It is absolutely imperative, critical, crucial and necessary that you have fun playing the game and not get too focused on what the revelations that reveal themselves look like, meaning what form the forms decide to take.  The zebra may be striped purple and black rather than white and black, but it’s ok.  The form is less important than the play of creating from existence rather than lack.  When things are allowed to be themselves they naturally reveal themselves, they naturally express.  The better you are at allowing what is to be as it is, seeing what is as whole and complete, it will show you that, and the more proficient and easeful creator you will be.

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

SYMPHONY OF THE SPINE

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SYMPHONY OF THE SPINE 

Vibrating waves of light, frequency & tone

Everything in this universe is made of energy, which is expressed in its most basic building blocks as light, frequency or tone.  These vibrating waves of light, frequency or tone contain information which informs what forms and structures they will organize themselves into.  Forms and structures, which we call physical or solid, are simply patterns of energy that have configured themselves in certain ways to give rise to what we see or sense.  Everything in this universe is vibrational in nature and is singing a grand symphony, because at its core it is simply frequency.  Some tones are audible to the human ear.  Others are outside of the normal auditory sensory range, yet nonetheless are still present and can be heard with your “non-physical” ears.  What are those you might ask?  Let’s just call them extra-sensory organs which expand beyond the five normal ordinary sensory organs we currently use and know.  

Our spines are receivers of the grand symphony of the universe.  The position or tension pattern of the spine will determine which frequencies we can tune into.  This is kind of like the equivalent of turning the dial on the radio station and hearing a different station play.  However rather than turning a dial you are shifting the position and tension/tonal pattern of the tissues of your spinal cord.  What does this mean exactly?  Well in very simplistic terms its means that when your spinal cord is taut (tight) it tunes into a particular station.  That station might be playing some songs that are quite familiar to you.  The words, thoughts, and feelings that come with those songs might be something like “the world is not safe, other people are not safe, I can’t trust others, I can’t trust myself, I am not good enough, no one cares about me, I’ll never have enough resources, I’m not supported, nothing works, I have to do everything myself, life is against me, I’ll never heal, things will never be ok, I’m scared, I feel sad, things are looking down, this pain will last forever, I’ll never be able to relax and breathe…”.  Elements of this station are pretty familiar to most of us.  We’ve all listened to some of these songs over and over and over again.  For some these are the only tracks that have ever played.  

When the tension/tonal pattern of the spinal cord changes position (ie. relaxes) then our nervous system, which is simply an antenna, tunes into a different frequency or radio station.  That station might be playing songs like “I feel good, things are working out, I’m abundant, I decide, I choose, I can trust myself, I am free, other people are allies, I am safe, all is well, support is everywhere, I am getting better each day, life is happening in perfect rhythm and timing…”. We’ve all heard some of these songs before too, however sometimes they get played less frequently than the other songs.  To recap, when tension is high in our spinal cord we tune into frequencies that create a less enjoyable experience of life for ourselves.  When tension is lower we are able to tune into stations that play more enjoyable sounds and songs, which come with different feeling states and a more pleasant life experience.   

SHIFTING THE TONE OF THE SPINE

Conduit between consciousness & form

You might be wondering now how to change the tone, position or tension pattern in your spinal cord.  Well your entrainment sessions do just that very thing.  This is often why you might feel lighter after a session, or you might have different thoughts, or see something in a different way.  Sometimes people don’t always make those correlations, yet as the tension shifts in your spinal cord you are simply able to tune into stations that you were not able to before.  The more tension we unwind in our spine (ie. the more relaxed the spinal cord becomes) the more far reaching stations we are able to find.  Some of those stations we may have never heard before and they may seem totally foreign to us.  Yet even though they are foreign they are oddly familiar, and even though we don’t know the songs yet, they feel good to us.  In fact we might experience downright bliss, ecstasy and sense of overwhelming love and warmth as we “listen”, and yet we don’t have any logical reason  as to why.  

Listening at this level involves more of what you might call using your intuitive faculties.  We hear beyond the ears, see beyond the eyes, feel beyond the skin, etc.  To our ordinary sensory experience of life this seems abnormal or “special”, yet once your system is relaxed enough to find this station, it really is as normal as any other experience, only it comes with more energy, more aliveness and an experience of interconnectedness.  This is often what I refer to as experiencing or coming to know more of yourself.  You are more than your physical body, emotions, and thoughts, and yet we don’t often tune into stations beyond these.  

You might wonder why the amount of tension on your spine directly relates to or effects your experience of life.  The spine is the interface between consciousness and form in this human body.  Due to this relationship the information that it tunes into determines how/what you will perceive and experience.  Just like we can easily move the dial on the radio, we can also change the tone/tension of the spine.  We might go back and forth between stations all day long, sometimes playing the songs of not enough, feeling unsupported, and like life is not working, to changing to the tone and listening to songs of safety, freedom, choice and bliss.  Whatever songs are more relevant and resonate with us we will gravitate towards and listen to more often, because they have a similar frequency with us, with where we are at and with whatever it is that we are currently learning.  

In this way your spine is playing a symphony whether or not you hear it.  The information (ie. beliefs, thoughts, feelings, and sensations) all carry tones that make a song.  The sounds of that song transmit or express through you.  No belief, thought, feeling or sensation is good, bad, or better or worse than any others.  All are neutral at their core.  Yet there are often sounds and songs that we prefer more than others.  Preference is ok, insistence however generates the experience of suffering.  Learning to dance to any song that is playing is what it means to be resilient, and to become a master of this waltz.  This is what it is to create harmony where there is disharmony and to enjoy whatever music is playing on your station even if its heavy metal.  This is how you choose your station rather than shift between stations a hundred times a day.  Reminders are good until we remember that we can choose.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

WANTING WHAT IS

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WANTING WHAT IS 

Getting into alignment

Wanting is an inclusive energy.  Wanting invites, welcomes and moves towards.  Wants guide our actions, our choices and they are the fuel behind our motivations.  Wanting is an attractive force.  When we don’t want we tend to feel aimless, lethargic and like we are just trying to get the day (or our life) over with.  When we do want it brings more energy into our system to move in a particular direction.  Sometimes we will try to convince ourselves that we want something other than what is in our present moment, yet when we realize that what is, is what we want, the inner battle ends and we become available to life again.

I think it is frequently the case that people have the experience that whatever it is they are experiencing is not what they want.  We tend to call this having a bad day, feeling low energy, or being out of alignment.  When we look at life through the perspective of seeing it as something we don’t want then we are out of alignment.  We are out of alignment with the way life is expressing itself in that moment, or said another way, we are in disagreement with the universe.  It never feels good to be in disagreement with what is.  It’s heavy, we feel irritation or annoyance, and generally experience less vitality or zest for life.  This is why feeling bad is an indication of being out alignment.  Sometimes we can’t always pinpoint the “thing” that created the sense of out alignment for us, all we know is that we feel bad.  Whenever you notice that you feel bad it is an opportunity to stop, pause, and notice that you are in disagreement with what is.  You are not wanting what is to be what is, and yet it is what is.  This is also an opportunity to shift your perspective to wanting what is, which brings you back into alignment.

As casually as I write that it does not always seem so easy to get ourselves into agreement with what is.  When we perceive that what is, is not what we want, we will often fight tooth and nail to convince ourselves and the world that what is should be different.  Perhaps it’s that we should feel different about how we feel or what we are doing with our day or our  life.  Maybe we think we should have different sensations in our body than we currently do.  Perhaps we feel cheated by our experience or lack of experience and we want to insist that we were wronged.  Maybe we are trying to convince ourselves that we want something we don’t really actually want, but that we think we should want.  It can feel hard to let go of our story about what is and simply let what is be.  Yet this is exactly what must occur if we are to get into alignment with ourselves and feel the freedom of being present. 

OPENING THE HEART

Choosing what is

A beautiful thing happens when we change our mind, and rather than disagreeing with what is showing up we decide to want it instead; our heart re-opens.  It might be that 5, 10, 20 or 100 times a day your heart oscillates from being open to being closed.  The only difference in it being open or closed is whether or not you are in agreement with what is showing up inside of your experience.  Being in disagreement tends to shut us down.  We get opinionated, judgmental, righteous, disgruntled, peeved, angry, sad, scared and on and on, when we are in disagreement.  Reactions, agendas, fears and self-survival dominate and motivate our actions.  When we are in that state of being the heart is not open and not in free flowing acceptance and love of what is.  

It takes a hell of a commitment/devotion to being in an open hearted state in order to get ourselves to make the decision to shift our perspective, or to shift where we are coming from.  To turn towards wanting what is.  You are the one that must choose what you value.  In fact you are the only one that can choose.  If your value is open-heartedness and living from the perspective of love, than making the shift is a must.  It’s really not even a choice, it is simply the only possible way to go.  What will then be required of you is that you must turn towards and lean into what is.  You must want what is.  Even if what is, is the most undesirable thing that you can possibly imagine or feel.  If you feel heavy or tired, want that.  If you just got turned down by a potential partner, want that.  If your body weighs 10 more pounds now than it did last year, want that.  If the house is dirty or disorganized, want that.  If a big project you’ve been working on tanks, want that.  If you are scared or depressed, want that.  If your body hurts or expresses some other sensation or experience, want that.  See if you want it, you stay open.  You feel what you are trying to not feel and that lets you relax and let go.  Can you feel that?  If you don’t want it, you close down and keep fighting or resisting, and you don’t really get anywhere new.  

We must first accept what is before any change will show up inside of how we experience life, and acceptance of what we think we don’t want is one of the hardest things for us to do as humans.  Yet when you master this, you master life.  You master life because no longer does what is showing up inside of your experience dictate how you experience it.  You become the source, seer and chooser of the experience when you come into agreement with what is.  This is where true power lies, where miracles are the ordinary way things work, and love/bliss is how you feel and see even when sensations in your body or other various emotions are present.  You realize none of it matters, because you’re in charge and the experience/appearance is not.  

Wanting what is opens the heart.  When your heart is open you give everything the opportunity to be as it is, you include all, you recognize wholeness and perfection, and you give everyone around you the opportunity to open their heart as well.  This is what it is to be of service, to be living your purpose, to be in alignment.  Being of service, in purpose and in alignment are not about what you do, but instead who and how you choose to be and see.  Here is the invitation to be brave enough, devoted enough and committed enough to love, to choose what is and want what is.  Any fear you have around doing this will be resolved in the act of you doing it. This is true sovereignty, autonomy and power.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

GETTING TO PERFECT

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GETTING TO PERFECT  

Attempting to create perfection

There is a constant stride in the direction of perfection.  We are always looking towards betterment, progress and more pleasant or pleasurable feelings and sensations so we can experience that flow of perfection.  Perfection being that state of being we experience when nothing seems to be out of alignment and all is going better than we planned.  When we perceive that we aren’t making progress, or we don’t feel as we’d like too, or life doesn’t appear to be working as we want, we try to find our way back into perfection by changing our environment or ourselves.  We attempt to get to perfect or somehow create it, rather than seeing perfect in what is appearing.  

The difference between attempting to create perfection rather than seeing the perfection in what is already here, is the difference between striving to get somewhere and being present now.  While this difference might seem slight to you, or it may only seem like semantics, I assure you that the two are quite different experiences of life.  While striving to get to perfection can feel rewarding, and even provide a sense of purpose, meaning and worth for you, it ends only in the continual chase to the next and next and next thing that we attempt to make perfect or right.  When we view through the lens of perceiving perfection to be lacking from any moment, we do not see what is already here.  Rather we view lack and project that onto our “reality” or life experience.  

So what does lack projected onto life experience look like?  Well it probably looks and feels a lot like your life.  It’s the feeling of wanting something, even if it’s small, to be different than it is.  This includes wanting yourself to be different in some way., including where you are on your “spiritual” journey.  It’s feeling slightly or overtly restless, and like you just can’t fully relax.  It’s hoping something will change and fear that it won’t.  It’s the feeling that circumstances decide how you feel about life, rather than you deciding how you feel about it.  It’s worrying about the state of anything including your own internal state of feeling, sensing or being.  It’s feeling doubtful.  Probably 1,000 times a day we have subtle flavors of these aspects creep into our mind.  Rarely do we freely accept every single thing that is in our experience.  Rather we let things grab us.  We don’t like what is so we resist it.  We then feel like life is not working, when really it’s simply our perspective and relationship to life which isn’t working for us, or at least it isn’t producing the experience we desire, which is typically freedom, presence and peace. 

RESTING INTO VS.  RESISTING LIFE

Gnawing fear of things undone

The heart of most people’s desire is to rest into life.  What we have however is more frequently an experience of sometimes resting and sometimes resisting.  There can be confusion about what resting into life means or is.  Often there is some fear that it means inaction, or even deeper to the root, that it means purposelessnesss, lack of personal value or that we won’t get what we want.  Being rested into life does not mean action or inaction, rather it is a way we be while engaged with activity or when non-engaged.  When we are rested into life we are simply being ourselves while doing and seeing that whatever is appearing is exactly perfect just as it is in this moment.  Rather than trying to achieve something, or get somewhere with our doing, we are more focused on our state of being while we do the doing or while activity is occurring.

This is a radical shift for most people.  We swim in the field of achievement, making progress, and getting somewhere other than where we are.  We also tend to live with the background gnawing fear that things will be left undone.  Most people like for things to feel resolved rather than in process.  We like the stuff of life to feel organized, in its place and complete.  When we don’t feel those things we attempt to create those feelings through the doing of stuff.  We try to get it all done so that we can rest, rather than come from rest and then get things done.  See when we come from rest we are present to the moment.  We may be doing some activity, but we are not attached to the activity going anywhere because we are simply present to it.  This allows us to experience freedom.  Freedom that is always there, but which is covered up underneath our sense that we need to get something done or finished.  

From this perspective you can see that it really isn’t about the activity or what happens or doesn’t happen.  You can also see that things will happen and get done regardless of how you be inside of them.  You must only ask yourself the question of how do you want to be in life?  How we be determines our experience of life.  Two people can experience the exact same circumstances, yet have completely different experiences of them.  The only difference is how they be.  Do you rest into life or do you resist it.  You get to decide for you.  Life, activity, movement and creation will keep happening endlessly and persistently regardless of how you feel about it.  The beautiful thing is that you get to choose how you feel about it.  That is freedom.  That is your free will.  In fact this sense of freedom is often where you are trying to get to with all of your doing.  You are attempting to get to that feeling of freedom, of liberated joy, of fully embracing what is, so why not just start there.  Then go about with all of your doing.  It’s logical.  It makes sense, way more sense than the way we tend to operate.  

Perfection is here now.  There is no where to get.  Movement, activity and life will continue.  Appearances, sensations, feelings, structures, bodies, and all things will change forms.  Despite, and with, all the changing forms you can choose to rest into what is.  It will open you into now and into the experience of aliveness and yum even when you don’t like or prefer what is appearing.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

TINY LITTLE PEACE DISRUPTERS

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TINY LITTLE PEACE DISRUPTERS 

Good days and bad days

Most all of us desire a state of inner peace.  That sustainably stable center of being, that remains undisturbed regardless of situation or circumstance.  I really don’t know anyone who isn’t in someway looking or desiring this for themselves.  Often times we taste peace.  For example we might wake up in the morning after a great night’s sleep feeling rested and fantastic.  Then we start our day and tiny little peace disrupters attempt to find their way inside of our experiences.  Maybe our partner is grouchy and that affects our state of joy a little bit.  Perhaps we don’t have the food in our refrigerator that we want to eat for breakfast because our kids ate it last night.  Possibly you receive a phone call from your doctor telling you they didn’t like the look of some your routine blood work that you did last week for your annual check up.  Then you get in your car, start it up and it’s making some strange noise.  You arrive at your scheduled lunch meeting only to find out the person you are meeting is running 40 minutes late.  You get the idea.  The list could go on and on and on endlessly forever.  

It’s really no wonder that we feel stressed out most of time and not really as present and centered as we’d like to be.  It seems to be that there are a thousand tiny, little (and sometimes big) peace disrupters that happen in a give day.  You can find them in nearly every moment it seems.  Little ways that life does not appear to run smoothly, where things are less desirable than we want them to be, and where life just doesn’t feel like we want it to feel.  We worry about the outcome of all the things and if everything will turn out alright.  We dread the hassle of taking care of things that we aren’t sometimes even sure how to take care of.  We live in this state of a sort of powerlessness to life and its occurrences, and we hold our breath while we are in the uncertainty of it all.  I’d say that this is a pretty regular experience of life for most.  

Days that we call “good days” are typically days where we either perceive that less peace disrupters are present or where they are present but don’t seem to effect us.  In these situations it is often that something that we perceive as really good happened in a day so we are less easily affected by the other going ons of life.  It can also be that we have more distance from the occurrences of life on a given day (i.e. less attachment to the outcome of things and more acceptance of what is) so the little things seem to grab us less.  Some things are easier for us to accept, others not as much.  The more we resistance we create, the less resourced and energized we are and the more those tiny little peace disrupters run the show. 

STABLE INNER CENTER 

Playing the game of challenge

All of those tiny little peace disrupters are really just little challengers in the game of life.  They are opportunities for you to learn greater and greater inner stability.  One of the things I hear most frequently from people whom I work with is that they want to have stability in feeling good, energized, joyful and in their center or truth.  They want to less taken by the circumstance of life and be in more choice about what and how they are feeling on a day to day basis.  So often people don’t feel in choice about how they are feeling and that is actually what feels bad, that is not being in choice and not necessarily the bad feeling itself.

One of the fundamental perspectives to take on this whole matter is that everything that happens is happening for you not to you.  If you make that shift in perspective than you can easily see that all of those tiny little peace disrupters (and even the big ones) are simply coming into your experience to help you learn how to have a stable inner center.  See we ask to have a stable inner center and yet when we are given a thousand opportunities a day to practice it we fail to see that we are being given exactly that which we need to learn exactly that which we desire to learn.  It’s tricky because when we see through the perspective that life is happening to us we feel powerless to circumstance and feel that we have no choice in the matter of how we feel about what is happening to us.  However if we pick up and put on a different pair of glasses for the day, glasses that see that every single occurrence inside of our experience is happening for us then we are much more readily available to learn from life rather than feel victim to it.  We can also more clearly see things as opportunities to learn and not as permanent, never ending states of being of which we will never escape.

Most people don’t realize how powerful they are.  In fact most don’t realize that they have any power at all.  Some level of denial, confusion and lack of awareness seems to be present for most people when it comes to knowing themselves as the all powerful creators that they are.  Yet the evidence is everywhere.  How you perceive everything that you perceive is evidence of your power.  How you perceive is how you will experience life.  What is more powerful than that?  How you perceive is how you create and thus how you will experience life.  At any moment your free will to perceive is intact.  Free will the first expression of creation.  It is what you are.  Free will itself.  You are free to perceive however it is you would like to, and you will thus create an experience of life based on your perception.  Perception is creation.  If you see things as bad or wrong, you will experience bad, wrong or the threat of bad/wrong.  If you see things as good, you will experience good and that life is working for you.  

It is really that simple folks.  You might like to insist that you don’t have any power, and that you can’t change how you perceive, but you’re the only one that can.  No one can give you a stable inner center.  Tools, techniques and programs can guide you towards it, but ultimately you must learn it through the opportunity of tiny little (and sometimes big) peace disrupters.  The gift of them is the re-remembering your power and your never ending free will to perceive/create as you’d like.

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado

COMING FROM ABUNDANCE

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COMING FROM ABUNDANCE 

Lessons in trust & faith

Abundance is the natural of being or is-ness.  Abundance is what is.  In truth lack does not exist because it would be impossible for existence to be lacking.  What is can’t not be.  What gives the appearance of lack is not the appearance itself, but our perception of what appears.  This may seem a bit tricky to understand, but if you sit with it for a few moments the truth of it will begin to reveal itself to you.  

We are conditioned in a perspective that says when I don’t have ‘xyz’, it means something is, or might be, lacking/missing from my experience.  This perspective of lacking/missing is what causes suffering or our sense of disconnection.  It also perpetuates the illusion of our separateness, or independence from the larger existence.  Viewing through the lens of lack means something is not enough, we might not have enough, and often we feel like we are alone in our quest to be enough or get enough of what we need or want, whether that be resources or experiences.  There is no trust in the orchestration of life, but instead fear of how we will make it work or get what we desire or need.  

Why do we so often blindly and unconsciously choose this lens of lack or scarcity?  What purpose does it serve us?  I think largely we choose it because it is the most accessible to us, to our psyche, and to the lessons we were born to learn.  One cannot learn faith and trust, which are the primary lessons of the human incarnation, if one sees the natural state of abundance.  For inside of abundance one knows entirely that they are supported so there is nothing to help us learn faith.  The conditions on this planet and the perspective of lack are prime for helping us learn trust and faith.  

For centuries we have been playing out the game of lack.  Fighting or attempting to manipulate life, ourselves or others, so that we have enough or more of what we want or need.  Manipulation that is often disguised in a multitude of ways, many of those being service or caring, but really its just about us doing and getting what we think we need or want.  Our lives for the most part are entirely self-centric and about gain even if they appear altruistic.  This isn’t bad or wrong.  It’s simply important to know where we are coming from and why we are coming from there.  With this understanding we can more consciously choose what serves now rather than sleep walk our way through our life.   

LIVING IN AGREEMENT  WITH LIFE

To know abundance

Part of viewing from the lens of scarcity means that we tend to not live in agreement with life, or with what is.  Rather we wish, dream, or envision it to be more luxurious, glorious, radiant or just better somehow.  We “miss” what’s here by wishing or hoping for something else to be here.  We fail to see abundance of what is because we are focused on something else being in our experience.  This is the recipe for living continually unsatisfied, unfulfilled, and chasing fulfillment inside of the promise of whatever is next.  I am not suggesting that you don’t dream or envision beauty, glory or your desires, but rather that you see it here now in your current moment experience rather than at some future date or time when things look different and there are different people, objects or experiences in your life.  To view this way would be to see the truth, which is abundance, rather than your perspective of not good enough somehow now.  This would be the equivalent of dreaming awake or seeing what is now.

While we wait for life to look different so that we can say it’s better is to negate the abundance of this very moment.  That future moment where you perceive perfection or better-ness will simply be another moment of perfect abundance that will be followed by someone else who wants to make it better and on and on.  On and on that is until we stop projecting into the future what is already here now.  No matter how shitty it seems or appears to us, if we don’t see that it is currently abundant we suffer, and through our perception of suffering we continue to create it.  Through how we see, we create the very thing we are attempting to make better.  

We have responsibility of how we see.  I think this is our one and only true responsibility.  Though this might seem trivial or not really that impactful or important, I’d argue that nothing else is more important than this.  See no one can really see how we see.  There are no outward signs to cue others to the lens we look through.  Only we know how we see; what lens we choose.  There are no accolades or external praises for choosing the perspectives we choose.  They are silent, quiet and only those that are also silent and quiet can see where you come from.  To them there is simply an internal recognition and gratitude for where you come from.  Yet even though our lens are unseen by most, they create the entire world.  Everything that is, is born from this lens from which you choose to come from.

Coming from abundance won’t necessarily make you materially rich.  It won’t necessarily give you all the things you want or think you need.  It won’t always provide the picture of life that you hoped for, however there is a silver lining.  That lining is that you will now live in agreement with life.  You will experience the peace that passes all understanding.  Your being serves despite whatever it is you do or don’t do, or create/don’t create.  It also allows you to be a conduit for life to move through you rather than you being the chief decider of all things that the mind then tries to figure out, manipulate and grasp.  You are free to be and to allow all the experiences of life to be as they are.  It is the end of resistance and the end of suffering.  This is to live/know abundance.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Network Chiropractor Boulder Colorado

Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration

RESPOND TO EVERYTHING WITH LOVE

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RESPOND TO EVERYTHING  WITH LOVE

Dancing with the mind

We tend to live quite polarized.  Liking this thing, not liking that thing.  Feeling joy when life looks like we want it to and frustration when it doesn’t.  As much as we like to think that we are always going with the flow and living in a state of surrendered acceptance, the truth is most of the time we are not.  The moment something looks or feels other than our preference we tend to go into some level of resistance.  Rather than welcoming what is present we tense up, get anxious and begin to strategize how we are going to survive or get what we want.  Our minds create worst case scenario stories about how what is, isn’t good, isn’t right and is going to turn out badly for us.

All of this puts us in a state of vigilant survival, which then activates us to react with self-protection.  Some of our ways of self-protection are more primitive and others more sophisticated.  The more primitive reactions are to shut down, withdraw, check out, avoid, attack or disappear completely.  More sophisticated reactions are to manage, rationalize, control, or contain whatever is occurring that we don’t prefer.  Be clear that whether we are utilizing a primitive or a more sophisticated reaction, both are means of self-protection in order to attempt to not experience what is occurring or manipulate it in some way.  Some of the more sophisticated self-protective reactions are viewed as “normal” or commonly accepted behaviors, but are still are coming from resistance to, rather than acceptance of what is.

It’s a tricky dance to not be taken by the mind because we often believe the stories it tells.  It’s hard not to as we’ve learned to look through the lens of it’s perspectives and have created an entire life through those lenses, both individually and collectively.  What we believe is so, or better said, what we believe is our experience.  This makes it hard to refute the mind because we will always experience validation of our beliefs of the stories it tells.  When it says “this is bad” we believe this is bad.  When it says “this is good” we believe this is good.  Hence the near constant state of polarization we live inside of.    The thing that many people don’t realize is that when the mind says “this is bad” you don’t have to believe it, or when they mind says “this is good”, again you don’t have to believe it.  See the bigger truth is that you, me, and everyone in between has no idea what is bad or what is good.  The best we can do is make assumptions about stuff and have preferences for things to be a certain way, but we have no freaking real idea what’s going on.  However because we think we know what is bad and what is good, we suffer and go into self-protection attempting to get things to be good again when we believe they are bad.  We appear to not suffer when things are good, but even when things are good we are often still suffering because our state of goodness is contingent upon things appearing/being a certain way that we deem as good.   

BEYOND STORY

Become the Creator

I have found that there is only one assumption free, agenda free, polarization free way to respond to the occurrences of life, which is to respond to everything with love.  It’s the only way to not personally suffer and to not create suffering through your insistence or perspective of bad or wrong.  Seeing things/self as bad, wrong or somehow lacking something, is the root of suffering.  To respond instead with love to everything that arises is to see it as complete, full, and perfect even if the mind views it as distorted or messed up.  Even distortion and mess is a perfect expression of the creator’s creation.  We somehow know this, yet refuse to believe it when it looks, feels or becomes personal to us, to our preferences, lifestyles and survival impulses.

Something we often forget, or perhaps don’t know, is that we are ultimately the story tellers.  It often seems too simple to us that we could just tell and believe a different story, yet we can.  In fact we are the only ones that can.  When we start the practice of responding to every single sensation, feeling, thought, world event, relational interaction and life experience with love, we open up the doorway inside the mind to write a different story or to end the stories all together.  You can write and believe whatever you so choose.  You can also stop writing and stop believing in anything at all.  There really are no rules here except the ones that you create.  For some this may seem or feel challenging.  One thing I hear people say is that they can’t get themselves to believe a different story.  For example if they feel bad, they just have to keep feeling bad and don’t see a way out if it.  They don’t see how by creating a different story they will feel better because they aren’t quite ready to let their current story go.  They want the appearance to change (their sensations, feelings, thoughts, some event, some experience) before they change their story.  However life works in the other direction.  We are the creators of what is.  What is does not inform us, we inform it.

We sometimes have strong attachments to the stories we believe about what things mean and how life works, and to our minds it may feel bad or wrong to turn our story around, even though the new story feels better.  Its’ a strange thing, but sometimes we want to hold onto grudges, wrong doings, or insisting that life, our body and everything else is not supporting us in some way.  This is a core story that runs deep throughout the human psyche.  You can transform it and you can thus forth have a different experience of life.  One that is free from insisting that the appearance of life look a certain way that you think means good.  One that is free from bad and good.  One where the only response is love, which is the response that always knows exactly what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.  The more we respond with love the less “we” have to do.  The less life is up to us.  We rest more into trust and faith and the knowing that life is orchestrated in ways far beyond what our individual minds could ever fathom.  It is total possible to have this be your experience of life.  All that is required is that you stop insisting that you know anything.  You invite in whatever is present.  You respond to it with love.  You remain open to the magic and the mystery that reveals itself moment by moment.  You can’t know before you know.  You can only be present and know.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado